Everything OpenStack at EMC, in Paris.http://storagezilla.typepad.com/storagezilla/2014/10/everything-openstack-at-emc-in-paris.html
I’ll admit to being somewhat amused by the OpenStack Summit planning call earlier today (At time of writing) because it’s possibly the smallest EMC event presence I’ve seen in a while. And that’s a good thing. Raise the Jolly Roger!...<p>I’ll admit to being somewhat amused by the OpenStack Summit planning call earlier today (At time of writing) because it’s possibly the smallest EMC event presence I’ve seen in a while.</p> <p><u>And that’s a good thing.</u></p> <p>Raise the Jolly Roger! Us brave few are sailing out from under the long corporate shadow and doing this guerrilla style.</p> <p>EMC has been making contributions to OpenStack since 2013 and is a core contributor to Cinder and Manila but Paris will reflect an escalation of community involvement over time.</p> <p>And hey, if I can use it as a lever to get deeper involvement with Free and open source software from more parts of the company, that’s a win too.</p> <p>You can find the list of <a href="https://community.emc.com/docs/DOC-39915">events, sessions and booth details here</a>. I’m looking forward to joining my industry colleagues on Monday morning for the OpenStack storage panel and we’ll see if we can have some sizzle with the steak when it comes to the content. </p> <p>Feel free to drop in if you’re around.</p>Storagezilla2014-10-29T23:24:20+00:00You are ancient history.http://storagezilla.typepad.com/storagezilla/2014/06/ancient-history.html
An article over the Register paints storage folks as the Mainframe Admins of the cloudy future. At the end of this decade when some cloud company says their glorified DAS can do xyz, you’ll be able to pull your cardigan...<p>An article over the Register paints <a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/06/19/where_will_the_new_storage_experts_come_from/">storage folks as the Mainframe Admins</a> of the cloudy future.</p> <p>At the end of this decade when some cloud company says their glorified DAS can do xyz, you’ll be able to pull your cardigan tighter and tell people the story of how that was invented first &amp; done better by Rameses The Great, Pharaoh of Egypt and didn’t you know him well having once seen him outside waiting for a chariot back when you used to be able to go to a trade show and only not know 95% of the people there.</p> <p>Then having absorbed the looks given to you by younger people (Five years younger) who just don’t know how much better things were in the old days, you’ll go back to the mystical art of carving and masking LUNs or creating file systems and enabling protocols. </p> <p>But what I’ve taken from all this is we’re now all <u>criminally</u> underpaid.</p> <p><strong><em>Cough up, HR! No more college graduates to do it cheaper…</em></strong></p>Storagezilla2014-06-20T03:41:38+01:00The dread risk.http://storagezilla.typepad.com/storagezilla/2014/06/the-dread-risk.html
Two posts in a day. It’s like the fires of blogging have been rekindled. (Not really) Some Twittering going on about protecting against insider threats in lieu of what happened with Code Spaces, but that was an external threat made...<p>Two posts in a day. It’s like the fires of blogging have been rekindled.</p> <p>(Not really)</p> <p>Some Twittering going on about protecting against insider threats in lieu of what happened with Code Spaces, but that was an external threat made manifest so I don’t see the technical equivalence.</p> <p>I do however see the <em>dread risk fear</em> that such an event has on people.</p> <p>Evolution has programmed us to react to dread risk fears to somewhat irrational levels as we see them all as extinction threats. You might fear the aircraft you’re flying in going down, but the most dangerous part of your trip was the car ride to the airport where many more people are killed on the roads in accidents every year than they are flying on a plane.&#160; </p> <p>An entire company reduced to rubble by an extortionist. What if it happened to us!?! People aren’t too worried that users and operators make a litany of errors throughout the year, all of which add up when it comes to data loss and data leakage, but it’s terrifying when the catastrophe happens all at once.</p> <p>Considering Enterprise IT tends to drive with the handbrake on when it comes to the adoption and provisioning of new services, thereby feeding into the ‘IT is broken as it takes you days to do anything, Cloud is faster &amp; better’ chorus, if you want to get any work done at all the last thing you should be doing is throwing more obstacles in the way of insiders getting their work done.</p> <p>The thinking that things should be slowed down even more to protect against the phantom insider, someone willing to lose their career and go to prison if they carried out such a malicious act, will do nothing but drive even more slipshod processes out onto the public cloud where the only experience you need at running an IT operation is in entering your credit card details.</p> <p>So lock your doors and windows, and put out the cat. Secure your data but be sensible around getting work done, then take the time to hire good solid people who you trust to protect it.</p> <p><u>And keep the dread risk fear in check.</u></p>Storagezilla2014-06-19T18:38:02+01:00In the cloud, you are still culpable.http://storagezilla.typepad.com/storagezilla/2014/06/in-the-cloud-you-are-still-culpable.html
‘You think you can run a data centre better than Amazon, Google and Microsoft can?’ The knock out punch argument from public cloud pushers everywhere. Depending on who you are the answer may be yes or no, but what is...<p align="center"><em>‘You think you can run a data centre better than Amazon, Google and Microsoft can?’</em></p> <p>The knock out punch argument from public cloud pushers everywhere.</p> <p>Depending on who you are the answer may be yes or no, but what is an absolute is that you value your business data much more than public cloud providers value your business data.</p> <p>So what’s with the shirking of responsibility we’ve started seeing? The shortcuts that haven’t been earned?&#160;&#160; </p> <p>The <a href="http://www.csoonline.com/article/2365062/disaster-recovery/code-spaces-forced-to-close-its-doors-after-security-incident.html">hijacking and destruction of Code Spaces</a> tells me that we have a new class of born in the cloud companies who think they don’t need data protection or security professionals because they buy into ridiculous fiction that public cloud providers can do it better than they can. Something those providers don’t actually say themselves and do expect that you put things such as multi-factor authentication, RBAC and a DR plan in place to make sure your business doesn’t crater.</p> <p>But some companies renting infrastructure don’t, because instead putting the work in on the boring money draining first principals they focus on the exciting part of writing and deploying money making apps. ‘It’s all built in, we’ll just use the services provided to us and we’ll be fine.’ </p> <p>This is the wholesale out sourcing of thinking and culpability.</p> <p>An aside, while their backup strategy appears to have been focused on protecting against logical corruption, with offsite copies for additional protection, a single two factor authenticator configured for use by an authorised administrator could have secured Code Spaces top level administration account and prevented deletion of their system elements. But could have/should have/would have doesn’t take us away from <strong>didn’t</strong>.&#160; </p> <p>Backup is easy, it’s frictionless on public cloud platforms due to the homogeneity of the components involved and how basic the backup options are. Data Protection regardless of where you’re doing it is <strong>hard</strong>. It’s hard because it requires thinking, it requires work which doesn’t make you money as you’re doing it and it requires people to be culpable. </p> <p>Keeping versioned replicas, guaranteeing their integrity and availability, securing them and securing the external perimeter around both the replicas and the primary data is hard. </p> <p><u>It’s hard and it’s boring and it’s necessary and it’s right.</u></p> <p>People and companies get hacked every day. Data gets stolen every day. We have a class of criminal using denial of service attacks and hijacking rented infrastructure from people every day. And every day you need to have professionals on your side who care about your data the way you do.</p> <p>You haven’t earned any shortcuts, your shortcut is a cyber criminal’s opportunity.</p> <p>Code Spaces isn’t an outlier, cyber criminals look for new markets just like any legitimate business. Expect more such extortion attempts on public cloud users in the future.</p>Storagezilla2014-06-19T14:30:37+01:00Conversations at the end of time.http://storagezilla.typepad.com/storagezilla/2013/12/conversations-at-the-end-of-time.html
Since EMC formed the Data Protection and Availability Division by combining the Data Mobility Business Unit and Backup Recovery Systems, I’ve been having a conversation over and over again. You could say I’ve been having it continually. So, let’s spend...<p>Since EMC formed the Data Protection and Availability Division by combining the Data Mobility Business Unit and Backup Recovery Systems, I’ve been having a conversation over and over again. </p> <p>You could say I’ve been having it continually. </p> <p>So, let’s spend some time, write it down and get pedantic. </p> <p><strong>C<em>ontinual</em></strong> means ‘<u>repeatedly but not constantly</u>’ while <strong>c<em>ontinuous</em></strong> is ‘ <u>a sequence without interruption.</u>’</p> <p>The difference shoots past most people without mattering, but to us it does matter and if you can keep the difference in mind, congratulations, you’re now infinitely smarter than anyone who has ever used the term ‘Near CDP.’ Which doesn’t make any sense even if you substitute the letter C representing <em><strong>continuous</strong></em> for a letter C representing <strong><em>continual</em></strong>, so long as the letter C involved immediately follows the word ‘Near’.</p> <p>That being said the conversation I’ve been having is if you make something continuously available, RTO = 0, does that make it continuously protected?</p> <p>The answer is of course, no.</p> <p>As we look at the cloudy application vendors re-writing their apps to span datacentres which may or may not be available on Christmas eve, thereby preventing thousands of ‘Buffy The Vampire Slayer’ binge viewing sessions, we notice that for a number of years with existing application clustering software and the distributed cache coherence technology of VPLEX, enterprises can do the same thing.</p> <p>Active/Active configurations spanning datacentres with the VMware HA/FT, Oracle RAC, MS Cluster or what not, with what you have today providing continuous availability.</p> <p>But just because you have continuous availability doesn’t mean you do not need data protection. Same as it ever was versioned replicas of that data are required to ensure you can meet the variety of recovery points which come with user or system errors.</p> <p>That data protection might be <em>continuous</em>, like with RecoverPoint CDP or it might be <em>continual</em>, like with a backup applications such as NetWorker &amp; Avamar or snapshots or NDMP backups and so on.</p> <p>Continuous availability requires data protection regardless of if it’s in your datacentre, your own cloud or someone else's cloud. The choice of continuous or continual data protection, or a combination there of, is entirely up to you.</p> <p>And now that’s written down I’m going to start asking people if they want <u><strong>uninterrupted data protection</strong></u> or <u><strong>repeated data protection</strong></u>?</p> <p>Not a C in sight.</p>Storagezilla2013-12-05T16:32:39+00:00With public or private cloud, always check the meterhttp://storagezilla.typepad.com/storagezilla/2013/10/with-public-or-private-cloud-always-check-the-meter.html
One of axioms we’re supposed to accept in the absence of any supporting data is that public cloud is cheaper than doing it yourself, always and forever. This is a myth which is passed off like it’s a law akin...<p>One of axioms we’re supposed to accept in the absence of any supporting data is that public cloud is cheaper than doing it yourself, <u>always and forever</u>.</p> <p>This is a myth which is passed off like it’s a law akin to the conservation of energy.</p> <p>It’s more accurate to say that one type of cloud, be it public or private, can be cheaper than the other <u>in specific cases</u>.</p> <p>I can understand why start ups jump on the public cloud, were I one I would too. </p> <p>I see the quickest way to burn precious VC cash is to write a check to a server/storage/networking vendor when instead I could rent all of that by the drop and hire a few more coders to actually build something which will start generating cash for me. </p> <p>Then there’s the added upside that new services are made available providing extended functionality, so the longer I stay the more new infrastructure options I get. </p> <p>But as <a href="http://gigaom.com/2013/10/10/amazon-web-services-should-you-stay-or-should-you-go/">this Gigaom article</a> discussing the topic with people who been there and back again shows, there could come a time where it no longer makes sense for you to carry on where you started.</p> <p>This also applies to workloads you might always have been running internally, it could hit a threshold where it makes economic sense to eject it out into the public cloud from now until eternity.</p> <p>If you work in IT <u>it is your job</u> to always get the most out of every dollar spent regardless of where you’re going to spend it. That means it’s up to you to get into the weeds on the numbers. Not somebody else or the CFO, you. </p> <p>Are there massive cost saving to be made in shared architectures operated at scale? Absolutely. But that goes for the public and the private cloud. And lets not forget that in the private cloud those savings are passed directly on to you and aren’t skimmed off the top as healthy provider margins.</p> <p>Kids of the public cloud folks aren’t going to school without shoes on their feet. If you think you’re getting anything cheap from a public cloud you can be damn sure it’s cost them a hell of a lot less than they’re selling it to you for, because if it doesn’t they’ll be dead soon. (Nirvanix)</p> <p>But it doesn’t matter where you’re running your workload, <u>always check the meter</u> and if the meter is running consistently on the high side you can probably do it cheaper somewhere else.</p> <p><strong>If there’s a universal law in any of this that’s probably it.</strong></p>Storagezilla2013-10-11T02:43:10+01:00NetWorker users become Data Protection usershttp://storagezilla.typepad.com/storagezilla/2013/09/networker-users-become-data-protection-users.html
The NetWorker customer independent email list run by Stan Horowitz over at temple.edu is expanding to cover all of EMC Data Protection technologies. NetWorker, Avamar, Data Domain, Snap & Replicate, RecoverPoint, etc. I’ve lurked the NetWorker list for a number...<p>The NetWorker customer independent email list run by Stan Horowitz over at temple.edu is expanding to cover all of EMC Data Protection technologies. </p> <p>NetWorker, Avamar, Data Domain, Snap &amp; Replicate, RecoverPoint, etc.</p> <p>I’ve lurked the NetWorker list for a number years as it’s one of a number of inputs I examine to see what the user base is thinking about day to day, it’s quite useful if you’re an Admin with your head down keeping things running.</p> <p>If you’re interested you can subscribe <a href="https://listserv.temple.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A0=EMC-DATAPROTECTION-L">here</a>.</p>Storagezilla2013-09-25T14:30:52+01:00Jobs! Jobs! Jobs!http://storagezilla.typepad.com/storagezilla/2013/09/jobs-jobs-jobs.html
Backup Recovery Systems is growing it’s Engineering organisation as we staff up to deliver on the next three years of new product introduction and product enhancement. Inspired by Chad’s SE post and since we’re growing like crazy I thought it...<p>Backup Recovery Systems is growing it’s Engineering organisation as we staff up to deliver on the next three years of new product introduction and product enhancement.</p> <p>Inspired by <a href="http://virtualgeek.typepad.com/virtual_geek/2013/09/magic-mondayjobs-jobs-jobs.html">Chad’s SE post</a> and since we’re growing like crazy I thought it might be best to list out some positions we’re hiring for in Engineering. Any typos below are mine. Most positions are on the West coast, some on the East and some in Canada. Send your resume with the job code you’re interested in to Dipinder Lamba at EMC. (If you can’t work out the firstname.lastname address format, I don’t want you) and name drop me if you apply.</p> <p><b><font face="Gill Sans MT">Principal Software Engineer/ Santa Clara</font></b></p> <p><b><font face="Gill Sans MT">111959BR</font></b></p> <p>Lead team members and other teams to define, design and develop the new EMC/DataDomain platforms. MS in computer science or similar fields with minimum 10 years of experience, or BS with 15 years of experience.&#160; Expertise in Linux/Unix systems programming in C.&#160; Experience in platform bring up (IPMI, BIOS, BMC)is highly preferred</p> <p><b><font face="Gill Sans MT">Principal Software Engineer/Santa Clara</font></b></p> <p><b><font face="Gill Sans MT">111932BR</font></b></p> <p>Lead team members and other teams to define, design and develop the new EMC/DataDomain platforms. MS in computer science or similar fields with minimum 10 years of experience, or BS with 15 years of experience.&#160; Expertise in Linux/Unix systems programming in C.&#160; Experience in platform bring up (IPMI, BIOS, BMC)is highly preferred</p> <p><b><font face="Gill Sans MT">Sr Software Engineer/Pleasant Grove, UT</font></b></p> <p><b><font face="Gill Sans MT">111518BR</font> </b></p> <p>Software Engineer on Mozy team, must be familiar with RubyonRails and application programmer interfaces </p> <p><b><font face="Gill Sans MT">Sr Software Engineer/Hopkinton, MA</font></b></p> <p><b><font face="Gill Sans MT">109716BR</font> </b></p> <p>Experienced C++ programming, Linux/Unix, Windows environment with storage or back-up background a plus.&#160; </p> <p><font face="Gill Sans MT"><b>Hardware Systems Engineer/</b><b>Santa Clara, CA</b></font></p> <p><b><font face="Gill Sans MT">106928BR</font></b></p> <p>Work with the Platform team to create HW system test plans.&#160; Work with JDM partners to complete the qualification of custom designs Provide JDM partner with test specifications and ensure JDM creates test plans that meet EMC standards. Review schematics &amp; PCB layout to acquire knowledge of hardware implementation and work with JDM to verify implementation consistent with specifications.</p> <p><b><font face="Gill Sans MT">Data warehouse Engineer/Santa Clara, CA</font></b></p> <p><b><font face="Gill Sans MT">112352BR</font> </b></p> <p>&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; 7+ years of Data warehousing, ETL, Reporting and administration experience working in an enterprise class production data warehouse environment and operations. Hands on experience in fundamental of advanced enterprise data warehouse architectures Expert level experience and knowledge of advanced data warehousing database modelling (ERDs). Excellence in SQL and experience of writing and optimizing complex queries.&#160; Understand data discovery, data profiling, and source to target mapping methodologies.</p> <p><font face="Gill Sans MT"><b>Software Engineer/ </b><b>Santa Clara, CA</b></font></p> <p><b><font face="Gill Sans MT">112734BR</font> </b></p> <p>7+ years of core programming and software architecture and development experience in rich enterprise grade Java Application, Server and Web solutions. Java, Java Design Patterns, Spring, Struts, Hibernate, EJB, JSP, JQuery, HTML5, Java Script, CSS, Rest API development, Web Services, Webservers, Applications Servers. Additional development experience in Perl, SQL, Apache, Ant, XML, XSD, XSLT, Maven, Ant, Make. Hands on in at least one or more of these database engines: Postgres/GreenPlum, Oracle, MS SQL Server, Vertica, and MySQL through JDBC.</p> <p><b><font face="Gill Sans MT">Release/Tools Software Engineer/Santa Clara, CA </font></b></p> <p><b><font face="Gill Sans MT">108193BR</font></b></p> <p>In this highly visible role you will take ownership of, enhance, integrate and maintain the tools and systems used by Development. The BRS Operations team is solutions oriented, fast and flexible fitting nicely with people that want to make a big contribution to product development. The working environment is positive and very dynamic. Innovation in product and approach is appreciated and rewarded. If you’re searching for a fast-paced and challenging career, focused on new and interesting technology and ideas, then you’ve found you’re home. Opportunity exists in Santa Clara, CA.</p> <p><b><font face="Gill Sans MT">Linux (Red Hat, Debian, Gentoo, SLES), Solaris, NetBSD or FreeBSD Administrator/Santa Clara, CA </font></b></p> <p><b><font face="Gill Sans MT">105393BR</font></b></p> <p>This position is responsible for a broad range of technical administration functions required to support application systems installed on a multi-tiered hardware and Operating System (Unix). Responsibilities include application support, troubleshooting and installation of all tiers (O/S, database, clients, application S/W and settings, etc). In addition this role will be responsible for supporting tools and applications used by development teams such as automated test tools, source/version control tools, request management, etc.</p> <p><strong></strong></p> <p><strong><font face="Gill Sans MT">Data Warehouse Engineer located in Santa Clara, CA </font></strong></p> <p><strong><font face="Gill Sans MT">112352BR</font></strong></p> <p>We are looking for highly self-motivated, enthusiastic, eager-learner and pro-active Senior Data Warehouse Engineer with a 'can-do' attitude and exceptional communication skills. As part of our Product Data Intelligence team @ BRS Division of EMC<sup>2</sup> this Data Warehouse Engineer candidate will work on various multi VLDB database/data warehouse projects and collaborate with multiple cross-functional teams at various stages of Software Development Life Cycle.<b></b></p> <p><b><font face="Gill Sans MT">Principal Software Engineer (Java/Back-end/Web Services)/BRS/Irvine, CA</font></b></p> <p><b><font face="Gill Sans MT">113857BR</font></b></p> <p>Our BRS management infrastructure team designs and develops software that serves as the integration backbone of EMC's enterprise back-up and recovery solution. This group gets to work with and explore all kinds of cool technology in order to solve the problems associated with making new and legacy software components work together.&#160; They are seeking a principal engineer to design, develop, innovate, work with other teams, drive synergy, reduce redundancy, and boldly go where no person has gone before.&#160; Skills:&#160; Strong Java and experience developing at back-end layer and web services</p> <p><b><font face="Gill Sans MT">Software Engineer (Java/Linux/Windows)/BRS/Irvine, CA</font></b></p> <p><b><font face="Gill Sans MT">107411BR</font> </b></p> <p>Our BRS management console team designs and develops the management console software that ships with EMC's enterprise back-up and recovery solution. This group works with the latest advanced Java technologies to develop state of the art, enterprise level 3-tier applications. They are seeking a principal engineer who enjoys the diversity of developing at all layers of an application and someone who can assist with defining the future strategy and vision of their group.&#160;&#160; Skills: Expert Java under Linux/Windows, OOD, multi-threading</p> <p><b></b></p> <p><b><font face="Gill Sans MT">Principal/Consultant Technical Program Manager/BRS/Irvine, CA </font></b></p> <p><b><font face="Gill Sans MT">106273BR</font></b></p> <p>Our program management team is seeking a Principal or Consultant Technical Program Manager who has experience managing multiple highly complex technical software and hardware programs, projects, and initiatives. Experience as a successful program manager for a commercial product is critical.</p> <p><b><font face="Gill Sans MT">Senior and Principal Software Engineer (C/C++)/BRS/Santa Clara, CA </font></b></p> <p><b><font face="Gill Sans MT">113853BR</font></b></p> <p>Our NetWorker team is part of the fastest growing division of EMC.&#160; With explosive data growth it continues to face challenges in complex enterprise environments that include SAN, NAS, Virtualization, Cloud, De-duplication, etc.&#160; They are looking for passionate, top-talent to join their team. Skills: very strong C/C++, experience with Java, Web Services, file systems internals, VMware integration, storage a plus </p> <p><b><font face="Gill Sans MT">Senior Software Engineer (Java/Flex)/BRS/Louisville, CO </font></b></p> <p><b><font face="Gill Sans MT">107261BR</font></b></p> <p>Our team in Louisville has an immediate need for a senior software engineer specializing in Flex UI technology.&#160; This team is creating an enterprise, Flex based web application to support EMC’s enterprise back-up and recovery solution Avamar. If you’re a hands-on talented and creative person that has solid technical skills they would like to talk to you.&#160; Skills: Java under Linux/OSX/Windows, MXML, Flex, HTTP</p> <p><b></b></p> <p><b><font face="Gill Sans MT">Principal Software Engineer (Java/Multi-Tier Apps)/BRS/Louisville, CO</font></b></p> <p><b><font face="Gill Sans MT">113855BR</font></b></p> <p>Our BRS management console team in Louisville designs and develops the management console software that ships with EMC's enterprise back-up and recovery solution. This group works with the latest advanced Java technologies to develop state of the art, enterprise level 3-tier applications. Skills:&#160; Java under Linux and Windows, Swing, RMI, JDBC, XML, EXTJS, Web Services</p> <p><b><font face="Gill Sans MT">Senior/Principal Software Quality Assurance Engineer/BRS/Bellevue, WA</font></b></p> <p><b><font face="Gill Sans MT">113967BR</font></b></p> <p>The Microsoft Apps quality assurance team drives the test charter for supporting Microsoft Server Applications such as Exchange, SQL, SharePoint, and Hyper-V for Avamar and EMC's next generation Data Protection application for enterprise customers. Experience with:&#160; test verification/validation methodologies, operating systems (Windows, Linux or UNIX), database applications. network troubleshooting, and virtualization technologies </p> <p><b><font face="Gill Sans MT">Consultant Product Manager, VTL (Mainframe)/Hopkinton or RPT</font></b></p> <p><b><font face="Gill Sans MT">103253BR</font></b></p> <p>Drives formulation of strategy and business plan(s) for a product line that encompasses mainframe VTL storage with disk and data deduplication technologies. Drives product management processes to optimize product definition, the value of products to EMC's business and product impact in the marketplace. Provides industry insight and communicates to Product Marketing, Engineering, Executive Management and others the product line vision, value proposition, and functionality. Creates &quot;first, best content&quot; describing and communicating product vision and product direction for customers, analysts, and EMC audiences. Formulates tactics and strategies to support the growth associated with the product family. Maintains expert understanding of the mainframe tape market and competitive ecosystem.</p> <p><b><font face="Gill Sans MT">Principal Product Marketing Manager/Santa Clara, CA</font></b></p> <p><b><font face="Gill Sans MT">112997BR</font></b></p> <p>The Principal Product Marketing Manager will be responsible for ensuring that EMC's BRS field has the training, tools, and programs to compete effectively in the marketplace. This position requires managing deliverables across cross-functional teams and offers an excellent opportunity for a high energy and results-oriented individual to make significant contributions to BRS' expanding market presence and industry leadership. A strong “will to win” drive and work ethic will be needed in order to succeed in this fast paced environment.</p> <p><b><font face="Gill Sans MT">Product Manager (open to level as high as Consultant)/Santa Clara, CA</font></b></p> <p><b><font face="Gill Sans MT">112822BR</font></b></p> <p>EMC is looking for a self-driven, experienced Product Manager to lead the definition and delivery of a disruptive, innovative solution in the backup/recovery space. The ideal candidate will possess strong Product Management skills to enable delivery and coordination of product releases, and is expected to quickly become a Subject Matter Expert (SME) to guide the technical direction of the product. Prior experience with Enterprise Applications &amp; Virtualization is highly desirable</p> <p><b><font face="Gill Sans MT">Sr. Consultant Product Manager, SW Data Protection/Santa Clara, CA</font></b></p> <p><b><font face="Gill Sans MT">113233BR</font></b></p> <p>In this new role, the Sr. Consultant PM will work with EMC Backup and Recovery System customers, engineers, sales force as well as other EMC divisions to define and execute on the strategy for data protection in the software defined data centre (SDDC).&#160;&#160; This individual will work closely with senior leaders inside EMC BRS and other EMC divisions to drive the initial requirements, product roadmap and business case for traditional backup/recovery and new workloads for data protection. This individual will be responsible for identifying new business opportunities and driving them through the development life cycle. Provides industry insights, and drives product direction within the company and the industry. Creates &quot;first, best content&quot; which describes and communicates product vision and product direction for customers, analysts, and internal EMC audiences. Formulates tactics to support the growth associated with the BRS portfolio. Understands and actively communicates the competitive ecosystem and its dynamic changes</p> <p><b><font face="Gill Sans MT">NFS Principal or Senior Software Engineers, RTP, NC</font></b></p> <p><b><font face="Gill Sans MT">108602BR &amp; 106120BR</font></b></p> <p>Data Domain Engineering has immediate needs for a Principal and a Sr. Software Engineer with expertise in NFS, preferably NFSv4.&#160; This is a hands contributor role working under minimal direction, providing technical expertise in developing solutions, interfacing with senior management and teams. Assignments may include new products, upgrades, enhancements or fixes to existing products. Relevant development experience or more, C, File Systems internals and protocols, UNIX systems programming, developing distributed systems, multi-threaded systems, self-directed and ability to work in a fast paced environment.</p> <p><font face="Gill Sans MT"><b>Senior</b><b> </b><b>Software Engineers, </b><b>Burlington, Canada</b><b></b></font></p> <p><b><font face="Gill Sans MT">111969BR &amp; 111968BR</font> </b></p> <p>Our Burlington office has a need for talented engineers to work on the client side of the Avamar and Networker product lines developing new product solutions for our customers working on cutting-edge tools and 5-10+ yrs or more of development experience, MSc or BSc degree in Computer Science or similar field, C/C++ , UNIX ,Windows, multi platforms, TCP/IP threads, client-server and inter-process communication, storage experience a plus, be self-directed and ability to learn quickly and drive project forward. C/C++ programming skills (multi-platform) Experience with TCP/IP, multi-threading, and inter-process communication Strong knowledge and experience with Databases, highly desired<b></b></p> <p><font face="Gill Sans MT"><b>SR SW/HW QA Engineer (DLm), Hopkinton, MA</b><b></b></font></p> <p><b><font face="Gill Sans MT">109986BR</font></b></p> <p>Senior SW/HW Quality Assurance Engineer for Mainframe Tape Replacement Products within the BRS division at EMC needed in Hopkinton, Massachusetts. Experience with systems integration, open systems, Linux, TCP/IP, Networking, basic troubleshooting skills, working with EMC storage including VNX, Isilon, VMAX. </p> <p><b></b></p> <p><b><font face="Gill Sans MT">Principal Software Engineer, Burlington, Canada</font></b></p> <p><b><font face="Gill Sans MT">99599BR</font></b></p> <p>Burlington, Ontario office is creating an enterprise monitoring, management, and control layer for the next generation of EMC’s Data Protection products.&#160; This highly visible group is looking for a senior-level engineer working with the latest technologies and who enjoys the <i>diversity of developing at all layers of an application. </i>Proficiency in C/C++ on UNIX and Windows, TCP/IP, threads, client-server architectures and interprocess communication. Experience architecting, designing, and/or leading development of an enterprise-level commercial product, highly desired&#160; Java, SPRING, Jetty, RabbitMQ are highly desired&#160; Web services development experience (REST, SOAP)</p> <p><b><font face="Gill Sans MT">Performance Architect/Santa Clara</font></b></p> <p><b><font face="Gill Sans MT">106091BR</font></b></p> <p>&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; Responsible for designing architecture, implementing and supporting performance related aspects of the de-Duplicating File System. Estimating performance and capacity support for future platforms based on h/w configuration or vice versa. Lead performance issues seen across different verticals and workloads.&#160; End to end performance debugging on customer environments and interfacing with customers to understand requirements. Deliver Design and Functional specification. Participate in all phases of the development.</p> <p><b><font face="Gill Sans MT">Senior SW Engineer - Advanced Development/Irvine, CA</font></b></p> <p><b><font face="Gill Sans MT">108339BR</font></b></p> <p>The Advanced Development group, in the office of the BRS CTO, conducts research on the future of data protection, answering questions such as: What is the evolution of deduplication -- bigger, faster, denser? How can you protect and recover Exabyte’s of data? - How can you simplify and automate data protection? - How does deduplication interact with other technologies such as&#160;&#160;&#160; cloud computing?&#160; We seek talented persons at all levels (B.S./M.S./Ph.D.)&#160;&#160; - Research Lead: Set and drive a research agenda in the BRS space. We expect you to prototype, help drive projects into engineering, and publish your results. </p> <p><b><font face="Gill Sans MT">Senior Software Engineer File System Protocols/Santa Clara.&#160; </font></b></p> <p><b><font face="Gill Sans MT">106941BR</font></b></p> <p>This is an opportunity to innovate and ship products which directly impact our industry. Our technologies cover everything from lower level operating system internals with a storage and file systems focus, through higher level network and storage protocols (replication, NFS, CIFS, OST, etc.), across various architectures.&#160; Unix systems programming in C, multi-threading.&#160; Expertise in File System internals.&#160; Developed file system caches and implemented file system semantics.&#160; File systems Protocols (NFS/CIFS), RPC knowledge, a plus.&#160; File systems Protocols (NFS/CIFS), RPC knowledge, a plus. Expertise in developing distributed systems implemented as a set of multi-threaded processes.</p> <p><b><font face="Gill Sans MT">Principal Software Engineer-Networker Product/Burlington, Canada</font></b></p> <p><b><font face="Gill Sans MT">107406BR</font> </b></p> <p>You will be working on core technology for back up framework developing new features, enhancing current features , create web services, add new capabilities. UNIX, Windows Network programming, C some C++ and a bit of Java. Experience architecting. Designing and or leading the development of an enterprise-level commercial product HUGE advantage. </p> <p><b></b></p> <p><b><font face="Gill Sans MT">Senior Software Engineer – GUI/Java/Research Triangle Park</font></b></p> <p><b><font face="Gill Sans MT">104314BR</font> </b></p> <p>You will design, implement and test GUI software using Java and Web 2.0 technologies. Agile development experiences a huge plus. Must be strong in Java, CSS, DHTML and GWT. You will identify and solve performance and scalability issues while working on new features for future releases.&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; </p> <p><b></b></p> <p><b><font face="Gill Sans MT">Principal Software Engineer – GUI Mid Tier/Santa Clara</font></b></p> <p><b><font face="Gill Sans MT">105038BR</font> </b></p> <p>Design implements and test System Management Software in Java. Author and Architect documents and design specifications for a new functionality. Working knowledge of J2SE/J2EE application server frameworks, GWT, CSS JavaScript, objects oriented architecture and design are important in this role.&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; </p> <p><b><font face="Gill Sans MT">Principal Software Eng/ Santa Clara</font></b></p> <p><b><font face="Gill Sans MT">111692BR</font></b></p> <p>Design, develop and maintain features within the Data Domain System Management team</p> <p>Write design specifications for new features related to Systems Management.</p> <p><b><font face="Gill Sans MT">QA Architect/Santa Clara</font></b></p> <p><b><font face="Gill Sans MT">110238BR</font></b></p> <p>Short brief on the job:</p> <p>Strong experience in defining Testing Methodologies, Testing strategies, Testing Approaches and Concepts, designing Test Plan and Test Cases.&#160;&#160; Experience Architecting and building Automated testing frameworks. </p> <p><b><font face="Gill Sans MT">Sr Software Eng/Santa Clara</font></b></p> <p><b><font face="Gill Sans MT">111109BR</font> </b></p> <p>Backup and Recovery System (BRS) is a fast growing data storage division in EMC. This candidate will be responsible for the development and maintenance of a new sub-system for EMC's DDR storage appliance.&#160; Job responsibilities include Develop and maintain the new sub-system in DDOS (DataDomain OS)</p> <p><b></b></p> <p><b><font face="Gill Sans MT">Principal Software Eng/Santa Clara</font></b></p> <p><b><font face="Gill Sans MT">108280BR</font></b></p> <p>Short brief on the job:</p> <p>Writes functional detailed design specs as well as responding to requirement documents and system level test plans. <br />Exercises considerable latitude in determining technical objectives, without appreciable direction. <br />Offers proposed design changes/suggestions to processes and products, exerts significant latitude in determining objectives of an assignment.</p> <p><b><font face="Gill Sans MT">Sr. Software Eng/Santa Clara</font></b></p> <p><b><font face="Gill Sans MT">107818BR</font></b></p> <p>Short brief on the job:</p> <p>This candidate will help design, develop, and support NVRAM device drivers and firmware customized to EMC's unique environment. The candidate will work very closely with a team of talented software and hardware engineers that are responsible for building our appliance. The person hired for this position will be responsible for a critical and sensitive piece of the software architecture.</p>Storagezilla2013-09-24T14:22:08+01:00Tomorrow&rsquo;s DAS, yesterday.http://storagezilla.typepad.com/storagezilla/2013/09/tomorrows-das-yesterday.html
Since Twitter sucks when the number of participants in any conversation increases to more than three I thought I’d break my conversation out as a blog post. VMware’s Scott Lowe asked an interesting question on Twitter which I thought was...<p>Since Twitter sucks when the number of participants in any conversation increases to more than three I thought I’d break my conversation out as a blog post.</p> <p>VMware’s Scott Lowe asked an interesting question on Twitter which I thought was limited by the transmission channel.</p> <p>Scott’s discussion point was ‘Cloud environments are fond of DAS because it’s simple and inexpensive, both of which are important in cloud environments. Discuss!’</p> <p>First off, what’s DAS? Direct Attached Storage is one or more dedicated storage devices connected to one or more servers. That’s DAS. There’s nothing more to it.</p> <p>Do the massive cloud providers use DAS, yes, but they don’t offer it to you and what you’re getting is in no way simple. There are layers and layers of storage software between anyone and what they think is a disk or other unit of storage. This is where all the storage magic happens. Maybe it’s object storage with objects numbering in the trillions, maybe it’s block storage with volumes in the millions. Some ephemeral, others persistent.</p> <p>If we look at Amazon Web Services, Google Compute Engine or Microsoft Azure when you request block storage from any who provide such, you’re not getting DAS. You’re getting server based distributed block storage where read and write I/O is distributed amongst servers which could number in their thousands or tens of thousands.</p> <p>Why would you want to do anything like that? Taking protection and fault domain mitigation out of the picture, which you shouldn’t but we will, management and the simple elimination of I/O contention to individual disk drives requires it. If you want to drive down cost by using fragile components, you may or may not be using the fastest hard drives priced like their materials were mined from the foothills of Mount Olympus, while driving up margins by getting the utmost utilization at an immense scale, you have to use distributed storage.</p> <p>We haven’t discovered a better answer yet.</p> <p>So yes, cloud providers do use DAS, the same way they use RAM DIMMs, but how they give it to you when you hand over your credit card and click a button on the control panel is the product of hard nosed storage software development. </p> <p>And that DAS is just a component in a massively distributed storage array.</p> <p>Because it’s in the storage software that all the magic happens.</p>Storagezilla2013-09-11T23:52:59+01:00Out to the up.http://storagezilla.typepad.com/storagezilla/2013/09/out-to-the-up.html
Before I run out the door for a badly needed haircut. --Full disclosure-- Just into the building out of college and into my first proper job, back in 1997 I sent the powers that be at EMC an email suggesting...<p>Before I run out the door for a badly needed haircut. </p> <p>--Full disclosure--</p> <p>Just into the building out of college and into my first proper job, back in 1997 I sent the powers that be at EMC an email suggesting the company take a serious look at buying NUMA pioneer Sequent Computer Systems. I saw Sequent, which had attached itself to Oracle’s hip, as a great way for EMC to do real damage to IBM &amp; Sun in what was an incredibly high margin business for them. </p> <p>The business of running Oracle databases very very fast.</p> <p>I did not receive a reply, a year or two later EMC bought Data General and dumped the Aviion server business while IBM bought up Sequent only to smother it within months of acquisition.</p> <p>These days when I send such emails I tend to get an answer filled with reasons for not doing what I suggest. This is what’s called career progress.</p> <p>I wouldn’t consider the above to be a bias but you should see where I’m coming from in what follows.</p> <p>--Disclosure over, to the topic at hand.--</p> <p>Neither scale up nor scale out are ‘better’ and I don’t accept any gyrations on the topic since it is the consideration of fault domains, availability requirements, infrastructure overhead and concurrency programming requirements are what should drive the decision between one or the other.</p> <p>Lets (quickly) look at both approaches. I’m going to use cluster computing to represent scale out and SMP/NUMA (Symmetric Multiprocessing/Non-Uniform Memory Access) to represent scale up.</p> <p>In a scale out cluster design a group of cluster nodes, each containing memory, CPUs, CPU cache and I/O devices are linked together via a low latency network and operate as a single entity. All the work to make that happen is done in software. This cluster design greatly enhances the availability, manages fault domains and can allow for hot addition of scalability to the overall system. But it does so by adding extra layers of software complexity as individual nodes are islands of compute and I/O separate from one another which need to be monitored and managed. Anytime they need to communicate they have to traverse the network. A network which while low latency is much much slower than CPU cores sitting on the same chip in the same socket.</p> <p>In a scale up design you don’t get the hot add scaling and fault domains can hit you incredibly hard unless you go the physical partitioning route but all memory is global memory, all I/O is global I/O, when you add CPUs they don’t need to copy data across a network to one another to get work done they can simply mark it in global memory as something that needs to be worked on. All of this makes the programming model much less complex resulting in higher performance per system as you can pack them with CPU cores and when you’re writing software to use them you’re not spending time on synchronising cluster node operating system clocks against OS judder or the myriad of other things required to keep nodes synchronised and operational.</p> <p>So instead of the most infantile of concepts of ‘the future verses the past’ you should approach scale up and scale out as engineering decisions.</p> <p>There are substantial operational benefits to both. Different benefits for each of them. But both models are too different to be compared in a vacuum. </p> <p>And lets not forget that cluster computing came about because the price of SMP/NUMA systems was considered prohibitively expensive, which it was because it was artificially inflated by the vendors of such systems to keep it a massively lucrative business for them.</p> <p>If anyone says one is better than the other they could very well be right, but ask them the problem they’re looking to solve before you take it on faith.</p>Storagezilla2013-09-10T15:10:28+01:00